Case Number 09463: Small Claims Court

HOLLYWOOD BURLESQUE / PEEK-A-BOO!

The Charge

Big Night at the Burly-Q!

The Case

When one thinks about sophisticated entertainment for a high-class clientele,
the burlesque review is typically not paramount among the usual showbiz
suspects. Opera, ballet, and other fancy-schmancy showcases are far more common
for the in-crowd than boobs, butts, and lots of bawdy belly laughs. Yet, believe
it or not, there was a time when swells took their special gals to the local
risqué revue for a little cultured carnality. Like vaudeville with far more
vagina, these sensual showcases of curves, crooners, and comics were variety in
name only. The tassels may have changed and the rack relying on them may have
been a little more quirky and a lot less perky, but if you were lucky enough to
see one of the old school striptease extravaganzas, you glimpsed a part of hoi
polloi history. Something Weird Video's release of Hollywood Burlesque/
Peek-a-Boo! is really nothing more than filmed stage shows, down to the
chunky chorus girls, atonal song styling, overbroad comic bits, and females of
fluctuating fetchingness. Yet the result is another winner, a title that gives
us a tacky time capsule look into a heretofore unknown era of urbane
unctuousness.

The first thing that will shock you about Hollywood Burlesque is just
how little skin there really is. Most acts of the era used more tease than
sleaze in getting their pulchritudinous point across. The ladies wore elaborate
costumes with several layers of undergarments. Bras went from ornate to slightly
see-through, while panties placed jeweled demarcations in strategically explicit
places. When they disrobed, a single piece of clothing would come cascading onto
the floor, another always in place to prevent any perverted previews. By the
time of the big reveal, sequined pasties provided perfect nipple and areola
aversion. If you were lucky, the gal would then head offstage to healthy
applause, only to return a few seconds later, sans spots. With babes like Joy
Damon ("The Happy Little Lassie with the Classy Chassis"), Jenne
("The Modern Tigress," as opposed to the ancient one), and stately,
statuesque beauty Hilary Dawn (who looks like a lost star from the white
supremacist version of the WNBA), Hollywood Burlesque's teat tricks are a
decidedly mixed blessing.

Every single strip scene in this film plays out in a strict, staid fashion.
Each Miss arrives onstage and proceeds to prove that, only a few decades ago,
rhythm and grace were optional elements for an erotic dancer. Some attempt the
infamous "pinwheel tassel act" while others merely lunge back and
forth. In between the "not necessarily" nakedness, you get badly
choreographed dance numbers, chorus girls who look like drag queen midgets on
strike, balladeers who couldn't carry a tune in two buckets, and comedians who
redefined the notion of shtick -- basically by removing a couple of letters and
creating an apropos fecal anagram. Still, there is some kind of antiqued fun to
be had here, especially if one does a sort of amorous astral projection and
imagines what it would have been like to be seated in the audience, watching it
all play out in real time right before your rummy little eyes. If you do, you'll
be surprised at how saucy some of the double entendres are and how far out many
of the farcical elements go. You'll also weep with wanton joy as creaky cocktail
waitresses and brutish barmaids become the "most ravishing beauties in the
heavens." Substituting flabby female flesh for forbidden fruit, is part of
what movies like Hollywood Burlesque are all about. They exist to remind
us how far society has swayed -- for both good and bad -- since the days when
gals were nude, but not rude.

The second half of the double feature is even more telling. Entitled
Peek-a-Boo! and advertised as presenting "Venus: The Body
Beautiful" this is another floor show as collective snapshot, a chance at
seeing how the less "elite" members of the gentlemen's club cabal
actually found their fun. One of the things you learn when watching these
recorded stage acts is that there is a definite link between the level of
enjoyment and the proficiency and professionalism of the performers. Put another
way, the crappier the cavalcade of comeliness, the more fun there is to be had.
It may sound crass or crude, but there is something inherently hilarious about
mocking these physically suspect matrons. Watching them scuttle down in to their
skivvies for the attempted arousal of their slobbering spectators is akin to a
kind of sexual slapstick. Therefore, Venus and the rest of her vacant vixens are
the true highlight of Peek-a-Boo!. Each one is given a name that both
tantalizes and terrifies. Suzette is "The French Doll," though once we
get a good look at her, a more appropriate label would be "World's First
Female Serial Killer." Sherry Winters (who actually could be mistake for a
post-pigout Shelly Winters) is "The Yum-Yum Girl." After her awkward
act, you'll wonder why appetites are supposedly satiated, not outright
suppressed.

The aforementioned De Milo mimic is ridiculously adversative to her
nomenclature. Instead of being a shapely, almost stocky representation of
natural beauty, our Venny is a walking stick with wayward lumps and bumps.
Indeed, unlike past offerings from Something Weird where our burlesque has
samples of some sassy, sexy slags, Peek-a-Boo! is like a striptease
version of saltpeter. Yet this allows the film to transcend its T&A
trappings and actually become a compendium of deliciously depressing variety
acts. What a misguided group they are. The comics here take baggy pants
pantomime to new, lower levels of laugh whoredom. They'll do anything, sans
actually being funny, to get a giggle. The singers are so horrid they are kept
off stage until a massive production number (featuring a dancing duo dressed up
like a sailor and a hooker...hmmm) mandates more than just a minor handful of
onstage personnel. One stares in blissful bewilderment at the level of
risqué ridiculousness involved in these productions -- the attempted
glamour, the false sense of ostentatious and haughty hoi polloi. Try as they
might, they can't get past the basic sleazoid certainty that the purpose of this
pandering was to make naked girls socially -- and commercially --
acceptable.

As usual, Something Weird serves up the best monochrome movies they can
find, though oddly enough, both films here look more "gray on gray"
than black and white. Also, what worked on an oversized screen in a 3,000-seat
auditorium has a hard time translating to the small-screen parameters of today's
home theater. The 1.33:1 image contains scenarios so far away from the lens that
the performers look like pencils in petticoats. On the sound side, there is
nothing technically tantalizing about '40s/'50s mono, with its tinny, flat
features.

Almost as if to make up for the lack of audio and visual splendor, SWV piles
on the Burley-Q bonus features, taking a standard two-hour disc (each film here
is about an hour, a perfect preservation of burlesque's "five shows a
night" mentality) and bumping it up by another 90 amazing minutes. We are
treated to a series of sensational striptease trailers, including the Lili St.
Cyr showstopper Her Wedding Night, The A-B-C's of Love, Kiss Me
Baby, and the oddly titled Ding Dong. Even better, the DVD provides
six bump and grinding short subjects, with names as nominally naughty as
Broadway Burlesque, Dancing Dolls of Burlesque (who don't quite
cut the rugs you think they will), Fancy Femmes, Girlesk Show,
Key-Hole Varieties (sadly, not a single lock look is offered), and
Ready for a Take-Off. Again, the diversity of dame disrobing is
startling. Some of our ladies look like they've spent hours meticulously
primping and preening for their partial to fully topless performances. Others
look like the trailer trashy wives of long distance truckers, gals given a
sawbuck, a shot of bourbon, and a moth-eaten bathrobe and told to strut and fret
their fetlocks upon the stage. Along with a wealth of poster art and publicity
photos in two mammoth galleries, this is another stellar compendium of a
long-lost performance art.

Frankly, no matter how uncomely these lasses may seem, these movies expose
more than just their epidermis. These were some tough and tenacious babes, their
reputations made the hard way -- by hitting the road and playing the circuit
over and over again. They were ripe for ogling and objectifying, and for all
their grace and showmanship, for all the fashions and features they used to
highlight their femininity, the public still saw them as nothing more than
scandals. As with most things in our society, when it comes to sex, the puritan
beat out the prurient every time. Though it may not be jam-packed with
wall-to-wall attractiveness, Hollywood Burlesque/ Peek-a-Boo! is
one vital lesson in Va-Va-Va-Voom! and a tribute to those who dropped blou and
trou so that the upper crust could commiserate.